Got kefir? Pass the gin

NEK spirits dream up a drink

Feb. 2, 2014

It looks like a breakfast smoothie with ice. It tastes like a combo that would emerge from the Northeast Kingdom: funky, earthy, spirited, boviney. It feels more like an Olympic figure-skating drink than a Super Bowl libation, but drink up. / SALLY POLLAK/FREE PRESS

Barr Hill gin and elderberry cordial, made by Caledonia Spirits, are mixed with kefir and honey for a localvore cocktail. The drink was mixed in Greensboro, at the annual retreat of Caledonia Spirits. / SALLY POLLAK/FREE PRESS

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The greater Hardwick brain trust was hanging out one evening last month at the Lakeview Inn in Greensboro. As usual, they came up with a food idea. Liquid food.

The group included a vegetable grower, a cheesemaker, a spirits seller and a bartender. A good old-fashioned dairy farmer thought up the drink.

“It cracks me up,” Johanna Laggis, the dairywoman, said. “It took on a life of its own. I suggested it to someone and they put the cocktail together.”

A key ingredient in the cocktail is kefir, a cultured milk drink. Laggis brought farm-made kefir from her East Hardwick barn to the party. Her kefir, made with elderberries and raw honey, was mixed with Todd Hardie’s gin. Hardie is founder of Caledonia Spirits, maker of Barr Hill gin.

“We had a retreat for our team, they came from all over,” Hardie said. “And we asked our local friends in agriculture and business to come for dinner.”

Hardie usually procures Laggis’ kefir before sunrise at the Laggis family farm. He likes to drop by when Laggis walks to the barn to feed her calves.

“I appear at 3:30 in the morning,” Hardie said. “There are seven quarts that are full of kefir and I bring seven empty quarts. Our team loves it. Our team thrives on it. They know it’s pure medicine.”

The medicinal properties Hardie is referring to are the probiotics, microorganisms that populate the fermented milk. Evidence suggests probiotics benefit digestive health.

“There were bartenders at our table and we said, ‘Let’s make a drink,’” Laggis said. “The thing that’s really cool about it, the thing I really liked about it that hit me that night: We had it after dinner and it was just perfect.”

She calls it a digestif. For that reason, the gin-kefir cocktail could be a good match for Super Sunday.

“It’s a really good drink to help settle your stomach when you’re eating all that crap that you usually eat when you watch the Super Bowl,” Laggis said.

It was a crap-less meal that inspired the drink last month in Greensboro. Dinner featured a roast ham from a pig raised at Hardie’s farm, glazed carrots, sweet and sour sauteed kale and scalloped potatoes.

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Not exactly a Super Bowl menu, but one that can be readily adapted for football:

Pete Johnson, owner of Pete’s Greens in Craftsbury, attended the Caledonia Spirits party. At his organic produce farm, Johnson grows 15 varieties of potatoes. I’m kind of addicted to them, and have yet to find a variety I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a traffic jam with on my way to a football stadium in New Jersey.

At Pete’s Greens they’re making potato chips with a gold-flesh potato they call Pete’s Gold. The recipe: Slice the potatoes thin with a mandolin slicer to produce uniform slices. Fry them in 150-degree oil for two to three minutes. Stir them (more like a nudge); drain them; salt them; eat them.

Johnson will be rooting for the Seahawks today. He’ll likely pass on a kefir cocktail and drink whatever Lost Nation beer he can get his hands on. First choice: Gose.

He grew up in Washington state when nothing about the area was cool or exciting, he said.

“This was pre-Microsoft, pre-coffee, pre-grunge, and all the professional sports teams sucked,” Johnson said.

Now everything in Seattle is cool, he said.

As cool as Craftsbury? How about Greensboro?

The way to find out is to invite Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman to the next Caledonia Spirits hangout. Then ask him what he thinks.

There’s cool. There’s cold.

During January’s temperature dip it was 20 degrees below zero on Laggis’ porch when she got up for chores. Outside is usually 10 degrees colder.

“I don’t bother to look at the thermometer,” she said. “Cause cold is cold.”

At the farm with about 500 milkers, Laggis makes two gallons of kefir a day. She feeds it to her calves and “peddles” it to friends and neighbors. The kefir ferments 24 hours before Laggis strains it and adds a varied list of ingredients: kale, beets, berries, peaches.

“I just throw everything in,” she said.

She doesn’t watch TV.

“I know there will be a Super Bowl because avocados go on sale,” Laggis said. “We hunt. We trap. We fish. We have a huge garden. We can and freeze. I go to the grocery store and buy toilet paper and toothpaste.”

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Hardie is a neighborhood kefir customer. He’s also a longtime beekeeper and honeymaker who ran Honey Garden Apiaries in Ferrisburgh. After decades of beekeeping, Hardie recognized a new path: starting a distillery.

“Many days in the fields working with the bees, and nights of driving bees around, gives one an opportunity to listen and pray,” Hardie said. “My family has been making whiskey in Edinburgh for over 100 years. We feel that spirit in northern Vermont where we give value to our honey and our grain.”

Caledonia Spirits, two years old, distills its vodka from honey. The gin is made from corn with the last distillation through juniper berries. Raw honey is added.

“I’m on a great adventure,” Hardie said. “I’m here to help you find gratitude and peace within mayhem.”